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LJ Idol Week 5.15: Cracking up
Jan. 7th, 2009 11:39 pmI plucked my opponent's pawn off the board and planted my bishop in its place, adding a flourish by twisting the piece slightly after it was down, as if I was screwing it into the wood. Capturing the pawn increased my material advantage to two pawns, formed a potential "steamroller" of my pawns on the left side of the board, and created what I thought was a very uncomfortable position for my opponent in the center.
Having made my move, I got up to stretch my legs and meandered over to check for any late changes in the standings on the tournament crosstable, which was posted over by the director's desk. It also gave me an opportunity to crack a wide, dopey smile out of sight of my opponent, secure in the knowledge that I was going to win the game. Bobby Fischer may have said "I like the moment when I break a man's ego," but I didn't play chess like that.
It was the last round of the competition - a regional team tourney - and our team, which went by the name of "Spassky's Drawers," was in the running for a class trophy. Our team's whimsical name was a pun referring both to underwear and the fact that I and another member of our four-man team had played to a draw in our respective games against ex-world champion Boris Spassky in a simultaneous exhibition arranged by our local club three years before.
I returned to my board to find that my brilliant move was, in fact, an awful blunder. I had overlooked a response that simultaneously attacked both my recently moved bishop and its supporting rook, and my material advantage was about to do an about face, leaving me to fight an uphill battle. More precisely, after a few moments of reflection, I realized it would be a losing uphill battle.
If you hang around chessplayers for any length of time, you'll hear them talk about material, time, space, and initiative. These are all concepts that help a player figure out where the game is going, whether he or she is winning or losing, and what to do about it.
Material, for example, is all about the pieces that are on the board at any given time. Conventional wisdom says that, all other things being equal, a queen is worth 9 pawns; a rook, 5 pawns; and knights and bishops, 3 pawns. Thus, exchanging a rook for a rook is an "even trade"; giving up a bishop for a pawn puts you at a disadvantage.
Though easy to understand, the concept is not very subtle, and relying on this wisdom will only get you so far, since all other things are typically not equal on the board. Sure, there are many pretty games out there in which one side sacrifices piece after piece, ceding a tremendous material advantage to the other side in order to checkmate the enemy king, but such games are relatively rare. More often than not, an advantage of a single pawn will decide games at the grandmaster level.
I spent about fifteen minutes staring at the board, not so much wondering what to do - I really only had one move available to me - but what to do after the ensuing mêlée in the center of the board, which would leave me in a pretty bad spot and deficient in material after the dust had cleared. I pinched the bridge of my nose, then rubbed my temples.
My opponent sat opposite, making a poor effort to hide his elation. Other players came by, stopped, looked at the position, and whispered among themselves. His teammates went away smiling. I wanted to scream. Twice, I came within a heartbeat of angrily tipping over my king on the spot, resigning the game without playing it out to checkmate.
I was not a happy camper.
To take my mind off the idea of resigning, I played my one-and-only move, pushing my king up one square to protect my rook.
Bam! In one smooth motion, my bishop disappeared from the board. Now our rooks were nose to nose, like two bullies in a bar fight. If I traded rooks, they'd come off the board, but my opponent's surviving bishop would then gain the initiative, allowing it to harvest my exposed pawns like a scythe going through a field of ripe wheat, before I could mobilize them. What I needed was time, which in chess translates as a few extra moves, to get my pawn steamroller moving.
The way to gain that time was to figure out a way to force my opponent to make moves that didn't help his position, while at the same time making moves that helped mine. The problem was - given what was on the board - it couldn't be done. With this in mind, I again eyeballed my king and thought about ending the game with a flick of my finger.
Instead, I pushed a pawn to support my rook. If my opponent wanted to trade rooks, the pawn would recapture with check, forcing my opponent to waste time moving his king away from the pawn. I would have gained one move, true, but after that, I'd be left twisting slowly in the wind, with no way to keep my opponent from marching into my position, using his king and bishop like a hammer and anvil to ultimately sweep my remaining pawns from the board. I felt like I was about to be squashed as flat as a bug on a racecar windshield.
My opponent pushed a pawn in response, and my heart skipped a beat. The pawn move was… a waste of time. It served no good purpose at all, and I suddenly felt as if I had been given an early Christmas gift. I advanced the pawn next to the one I had pushed the move before, thus mobilizing two-thirds of my as-yet unopposed "steamroller."
My opponent seemed not to care, and played another pawn move! What was he doing? What was he thinking?
Pawns are doubtless the product of a brilliant, but diseased mind. You see, unlike all other chess pieces, they can only move forward; they cannot move backward. They cannot budge an opposing piece standing in front of them, because they can only attack (or protect) squares that are diagonally in front of them. This makes pawns the weakest of chess pieces.
Yet as weak as a pawn may be, it can still capture enemy pieces and even deliver checkmate, if the opportunity presents itself. Further, inside of each pawn is this crazy ability to be "promoted" to any piece of the player's choosing - most often, a queen (the most powerful piece on the board) - but only if it can reach the opposite end of the board.
Now, the thing that made the pawns on my left flank so potentially powerful was the fact that there were no obstacles between them and my opponent's side of the board. This, combined with the ability to support each other as they advanced, was what created the "steamroller" effect. (To make a rough analogy with hockey, think of a "power play" situation where the entire defending team is sitting in the penalty box!) On the other hand - and on the other flank - my opponent's pawns could be easily stopped, because I still had a couple of pawns left on that side of the board.
With his last two moves, my opponent betrayed a fatal flaw that is common among amateurs: an inability to win a won endgame. (I recognized this because I myself have been troubled by this affliction from time to time.)
Broadly speaking, the game of chess is divided into the opening, the middle game, and the endgame. Which is most important? Well, the legendary Cuban World Champion Capablanca maintained that the most important phase for a beginner to master first was the endgame, and today, this is still considered the case.
However, generations of amateurs have ignored this advice, reasoning that without a good grounding in the opening and middle game, they'll never manage to reach an endgame, much less one they can win. Yet the flip side to ignoring conventional wisdom is ending up with a won endgame that you lack the technique to win.
I began to hope this flaw would provide me with the time I needed to save my game. It did.
Seven moves later, my steamroller had become an Irresistible Force, while my opponent's pawns were stuck fast, his king had retreated, and his bishop was trying to simultaneously attack in one direction and defend in another, leaving me with a position with - speaking euphemistically - very definite possibilities. In short, a win.
I had managed to weather the despair of a serious blunder, but now, it was my opponent's turn to kick himself, because he knew exactly what his problem was, and there wasn't anything he could do to stave off the inevitable. His teammates, who had been hovering near our board, moved away, leaving him to deal with his situation.
His brow wrinkled. His upper lip started to curl, hinting at a snarl. He started to run his fingers through his hair, and then began to rhythmically pull his hair. Then he stopped, cupped his hands together vertically in front of his face, covered his nose and mouth, and breathed heavily a couple of times. His eyes met mine, and I saw something change, subtly.
Then he reached down and tipped over his king.
Cheers...
P.S. Our team won the trophy!
Having made my move, I got up to stretch my legs and meandered over to check for any late changes in the standings on the tournament crosstable, which was posted over by the director's desk. It also gave me an opportunity to crack a wide, dopey smile out of sight of my opponent, secure in the knowledge that I was going to win the game. Bobby Fischer may have said "I like the moment when I break a man's ego," but I didn't play chess like that.
It was the last round of the competition - a regional team tourney - and our team, which went by the name of "Spassky's Drawers," was in the running for a class trophy. Our team's whimsical name was a pun referring both to underwear and the fact that I and another member of our four-man team had played to a draw in our respective games against ex-world champion Boris Spassky in a simultaneous exhibition arranged by our local club three years before.
I returned to my board to find that my brilliant move was, in fact, an awful blunder. I had overlooked a response that simultaneously attacked both my recently moved bishop and its supporting rook, and my material advantage was about to do an about face, leaving me to fight an uphill battle. More precisely, after a few moments of reflection, I realized it would be a losing uphill battle.
If you hang around chessplayers for any length of time, you'll hear them talk about material, time, space, and initiative. These are all concepts that help a player figure out where the game is going, whether he or she is winning or losing, and what to do about it.
Material, for example, is all about the pieces that are on the board at any given time. Conventional wisdom says that, all other things being equal, a queen is worth 9 pawns; a rook, 5 pawns; and knights and bishops, 3 pawns. Thus, exchanging a rook for a rook is an "even trade"; giving up a bishop for a pawn puts you at a disadvantage.
Though easy to understand, the concept is not very subtle, and relying on this wisdom will only get you so far, since all other things are typically not equal on the board. Sure, there are many pretty games out there in which one side sacrifices piece after piece, ceding a tremendous material advantage to the other side in order to checkmate the enemy king, but such games are relatively rare. More often than not, an advantage of a single pawn will decide games at the grandmaster level.
I spent about fifteen minutes staring at the board, not so much wondering what to do - I really only had one move available to me - but what to do after the ensuing mêlée in the center of the board, which would leave me in a pretty bad spot and deficient in material after the dust had cleared. I pinched the bridge of my nose, then rubbed my temples.
My opponent sat opposite, making a poor effort to hide his elation. Other players came by, stopped, looked at the position, and whispered among themselves. His teammates went away smiling. I wanted to scream. Twice, I came within a heartbeat of angrily tipping over my king on the spot, resigning the game without playing it out to checkmate.
I was not a happy camper.
To take my mind off the idea of resigning, I played my one-and-only move, pushing my king up one square to protect my rook.
Bam! In one smooth motion, my bishop disappeared from the board. Now our rooks were nose to nose, like two bullies in a bar fight. If I traded rooks, they'd come off the board, but my opponent's surviving bishop would then gain the initiative, allowing it to harvest my exposed pawns like a scythe going through a field of ripe wheat, before I could mobilize them. What I needed was time, which in chess translates as a few extra moves, to get my pawn steamroller moving.
The way to gain that time was to figure out a way to force my opponent to make moves that didn't help his position, while at the same time making moves that helped mine. The problem was - given what was on the board - it couldn't be done. With this in mind, I again eyeballed my king and thought about ending the game with a flick of my finger.
Instead, I pushed a pawn to support my rook. If my opponent wanted to trade rooks, the pawn would recapture with check, forcing my opponent to waste time moving his king away from the pawn. I would have gained one move, true, but after that, I'd be left twisting slowly in the wind, with no way to keep my opponent from marching into my position, using his king and bishop like a hammer and anvil to ultimately sweep my remaining pawns from the board. I felt like I was about to be squashed as flat as a bug on a racecar windshield.
My opponent pushed a pawn in response, and my heart skipped a beat. The pawn move was… a waste of time. It served no good purpose at all, and I suddenly felt as if I had been given an early Christmas gift. I advanced the pawn next to the one I had pushed the move before, thus mobilizing two-thirds of my as-yet unopposed "steamroller."
My opponent seemed not to care, and played another pawn move! What was he doing? What was he thinking?
Pawns are doubtless the product of a brilliant, but diseased mind. You see, unlike all other chess pieces, they can only move forward; they cannot move backward. They cannot budge an opposing piece standing in front of them, because they can only attack (or protect) squares that are diagonally in front of them. This makes pawns the weakest of chess pieces.
Yet as weak as a pawn may be, it can still capture enemy pieces and even deliver checkmate, if the opportunity presents itself. Further, inside of each pawn is this crazy ability to be "promoted" to any piece of the player's choosing - most often, a queen (the most powerful piece on the board) - but only if it can reach the opposite end of the board.
Now, the thing that made the pawns on my left flank so potentially powerful was the fact that there were no obstacles between them and my opponent's side of the board. This, combined with the ability to support each other as they advanced, was what created the "steamroller" effect. (To make a rough analogy with hockey, think of a "power play" situation where the entire defending team is sitting in the penalty box!) On the other hand - and on the other flank - my opponent's pawns could be easily stopped, because I still had a couple of pawns left on that side of the board.
With his last two moves, my opponent betrayed a fatal flaw that is common among amateurs: an inability to win a won endgame. (I recognized this because I myself have been troubled by this affliction from time to time.)
Broadly speaking, the game of chess is divided into the opening, the middle game, and the endgame. Which is most important? Well, the legendary Cuban World Champion Capablanca maintained that the most important phase for a beginner to master first was the endgame, and today, this is still considered the case.
However, generations of amateurs have ignored this advice, reasoning that without a good grounding in the opening and middle game, they'll never manage to reach an endgame, much less one they can win. Yet the flip side to ignoring conventional wisdom is ending up with a won endgame that you lack the technique to win.
I began to hope this flaw would provide me with the time I needed to save my game. It did.
Seven moves later, my steamroller had become an Irresistible Force, while my opponent's pawns were stuck fast, his king had retreated, and his bishop was trying to simultaneously attack in one direction and defend in another, leaving me with a position with - speaking euphemistically - very definite possibilities. In short, a win.
I had managed to weather the despair of a serious blunder, but now, it was my opponent's turn to kick himself, because he knew exactly what his problem was, and there wasn't anything he could do to stave off the inevitable. His teammates, who had been hovering near our board, moved away, leaving him to deal with his situation.
His brow wrinkled. His upper lip started to curl, hinting at a snarl. He started to run his fingers through his hair, and then began to rhythmically pull his hair. Then he stopped, cupped his hands together vertically in front of his face, covered his nose and mouth, and breathed heavily a couple of times. His eyes met mine, and I saw something change, subtly.
Then he reached down and tipped over his king.
Cheers...
P.S. Our team won the trophy!
